I’ve been out of the blogging arena for far too long. However, my interest in health and nutrition has not faded. I know I owe you all so much information since I haven’t truly updated this blog in over a year! But everytime I had an hour to write, I’d think… wow it’s been so long… the task of summing everything that happened in the last year, all the things I wanted to write about from the beginning, all the things I’ve experienced since then, all the things I’ve learned from research and self experimentation and tracking. Where do I even begin? The task seemed so daunting. And each day that I didn’t write, the task became more scary. So much pressure! What do I write and what do I leave out for now?

My wife (yes, we got married, finally!) knows that the one of the few things on my mind day and night is nutrition. It’s come to the point where we’d go on date nights, or spend a nice night together at home, and she’d start it off with “OK, let’s make a deal, no talk about nutrition tonight.” And I’d struggle to find a different topic to talk about. I need a different outlet (this blog) other than nutritional word vomit towards my wife. So here goes… just winging it! I apologize for the lack of brevity… but you should know me better than that by now! But I will try to keep it at least semi reasonable

Or if you are truly too lazy or busy to read, you can just scroll through the pics to see some of our progress. But you shouldn’t be lazy. It’s not good for you!

It’s been a good 9 months since I’ve written anything on this blog. And I apologize for keeping you waiting. Over the last year, I’ve had a lot of readers and lots of friends and family messaging me on Facebook with questions etc. I hope I’ve inspired people to explore the topic further than what they’ve found in my blog so far. I’ve also gotten a couple of ping backs (references to my blog on other sites – primarily forums) and this last one (I’m looking at you, certain Mark’s Daily Apple forum/journal person!) really encouraged me to, at the very least, let you all know that I haven’t given up. I’m still going strong and believe in this diet as the optimal way of eating and living a healthier and longer life. And I definitely still intend to continue writing.

The results are in! Today, I got a hydrostatic body fat test to find out just how effective my low-carb lifestyle is. But before the big before and after photo reveal- here’s a little about how the test works.

“People [...] ate a total of 65,000 more calories and lost 141% more weight.”
– How could this be possible?

Calories in VS. calories out

You have all heard it. It’s undisputed. I mean, it’s the first law of thermodynamics: matter and/or energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only change forms. So, in order to lose those pesky pounds, the “calories in/calories out” model tells us that we need to expend more energy than we consume in order to lose weight.

Most people understand this concept. If you eat more calories than you expend through things like exercise and just simply the energy required by your organs to function normally, then you gain weight. I am not here to dispute that fact. But I am here to challenge the idea that calories is what you should focus on to regulate fat storage or fat loss. Calories should simply NOT be your focus if you want to lose weight and be healthy.

It’s been a while since I posted. It isn’t that I forgot about or abandoned this blog. I’ve been wanting to post for some time now. But I knew the next post had to be the big reveal on what the diet is. I wanted to get it right. But I came to realize after 2 weeks of stalling that it will never get done if I don’t just take a stab at it. I accepted that this won’t be the 100% primer for this diet (or shall I say “lifestyle” since a diet might imply that it is a temporary change) and I may miss some very important points along the way, but the good thing about a blog is I can dive into the fine details in individual posts. So if you have questions, ask them in the comments and I’ll either answer them there, in a series of blog posts, or both.

Anyways, if you want to know the science, read all the sections. It is a very long post (probably will be my longest ever) but I encourage you to understand it all and empower yourself (otherwise you may just be seen as someone following another “fad diet”). Otherwise, skip to the bottom to read what my diet consists of. But make sure you come back and read all the sciencey stuff later!

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.
– Dr. Dwight Lundell, M.D.

I know, I know. This isn’t what I said my next blog post would be on. But… I went to the dog park today and overheard this elderly looking woman talking on her cell phone. I am going to go out on a limb and say she was on the call with her husband (or someone of a similar age). I caught her asking, “Did you check your cholesterol today?” And just minutes before, Ryan had posted this link on a Facebook comment for this blog, as well as in the comments of my second blog post. It was this moment where everything seemed more serious and more real than it had before. I mean obviously I want to prevent the disease in myself, but it was just one of those “duh” moments. The epiphany was that people have these issues right now and that people died today and are going to continue to die of these causes. I know… dramatic. Was just in one of those moods I guess.

I’ve been sitting around debating, “What is my next post going to be? In what order do I want to write these topics?” I really want to hit on a lot of the key points in science in the early posts to really set a strong foundation before I jump into lighter stuff. But I don’t want it to get so heavy that I’m boring everyone to death. I’ve been getting lots of requests for recipes, typical meal plans, etc. And that is something I’m planning on doing very soon. So I think naturally, the next few blog posts will be some order of these things:

In 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack and survived. At the time, he was at a healthy weight and had normal serum cholesterol levels. The president’s medical advisors then instructed him to decrease his fat intake and increase his carbohydrate intake. In response to the intense dietary intervention, his blood cholesterol levels increased as well as his weight. Naturally, he decreased his fat intake even more to try to counteract this unexpected result. He soon became obsessed with these numbers. So, you can guess that he followed the medical advice to a tee.

How do you think this story ends? Well, President Eisenhower had 6 more heart attacks in the next 13 years along with other diet related issues (persistent digestive issues for example). The last of the 7 total heart attacks killed him in 1969.

Now let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. This is just one person. The same advice that was given to Eisenhower is being given to us every single day. Whether it be via advertisements on TV telling you to “go ahead. cheat on butter” or news headlines telling you red meat will kill you (based on faux science).